Posted on 07/16/2002 7:40:55 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Scientists searching the stars for aliens are convinced an E.T. is out there -- it's just that they haven't had the know-how to detect such a being.
But now technological advances have opened the way for scientists to check millions of previously unknown star systems, dramatically increasing the chances of finding intelligent life in outer space in the next 25 years, the world's largest private extraterrestrial agency believes.
"We're looking for needles in the haystack that is our galaxy, but there could be thousands of needles out there," Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at California's non-profit Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( news - web sites) (SETI) Institute, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
"If that's the case, with the number of new star systems we now hope to check, we should find one of those in the next 25 years."
But Shostak, visiting Australia to attend a conference on extraterrestrial research, said detecting alien life, like the big-eyed alien in the film E.T., was only the start.
"Even if we detect life out there, we'll still know nothing about what form of life we have detected and I doubt they'll be able -- or want -- to communicate with us," Shostak said.
Since it was founded in 1984, the SETI Institute has monitored radio signals, hoping to pick up a transmission from outer space. Its Project Phoenix conducts two annual three-week sessions on a radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Project Phoenix, widely seen as the inspiration for the 1997 film "Contact" starring Jodie Foster, which depicted a search for life beyond earth, is the privately funded successor to an original NASA ( news - web sites) program that was canceled in 1993 amid much skepticism by the U.S. Congress.
But the search has been slow. About 500 of 1,000 targeted stars have been examined -- and no extraterrestrial transmissions have been detected.
E.T. NOT ON THE LINE
"We do get signals all the time but when checked out they have all been human made...and are not from E.T., more AT&T," said Shostak.
He said the privately-funded institute was developing a giant US$26 million telescope to start operating in 2005 that can search the stars for signals at least 100 times faster.
The so-called Allen Telescope Array, named after sponsor and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is a network of more than 350, six-meter (20-foot) satellite dishes with a collecting area exceeding that of a 100-meter (338-foot) telescope.
The Allen array, to be built at the Hat Creek Observatory about 290 miles northeast of San Fransciso, will also expand the institute's stellar reconnaissance to 100,000 or even one million nearby stars, searching 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Shostak said he is convinced there is intelligent life out there -- but don't expect to find a loveable, boggle-eyed E.T..
He said if any aliens share the same carbon-based organic chemistry as humans, they would probably have a central processing system, eyes, a mouth or two, legs and some form of reproduction.
But Shostak thinks any intelligent extraterrestrial life will have gone light years beyond the intelligence of man.
"What we are more likely to hear will be so far beyond our own level that it might not be biological anymore but some artificial form of life," he said. "Don't expect a blobby, squishy alien to be on the end of the line."
FRegards, MM
Perhaps you were ignoring the material in HIS links as well, so he ALSO felt the need to present the facts "out in the open"..
Incidently, have you posted anything other than invectives or opinions throughout this entire thread? Don't slam those that DO present facts and material that substantiates those facts.
But a couple of other people are big on splashing dictionary entries all over the page. Nothing makes a weak argument strong like bringing out the dictionary.
I've posted ONE dictionary reference, as you apparently had a misconception of the word delusional. And again, I can see why people might just have to give you definitions every now and then..
What strikes me about this crop circle thing is that it's just another one, a subset of the UFO type I've seen already. I've argued with those before, and JFK assassination freaks, and tons of creationists. It's the same experience.
Have you ever considered the possibility that these people ARE STATING FACTS? As far as Creationists, I haven't really delved into their philosophy, but I do feel that their is a Higher Power that is well beyond our understanding, and who IS aware of everything from Alpha to Omega. I personally feel that there is much more than meets the eye in many things, and that includes how everything came about.
Thanks for the support MM..
I'm reminded of an old "Kids in the Hall" routine. As a group of aliens is about to examine an abductee, one of them questions the necessity for the anal probe. In 50 years of conducting such experiments, they'd only learned that 10% of the abductees enjoy it.
There are MANY here on FR that "feel the need" to debunk anything that is not in the accepted line of thought. These jokers are easy, I've seen some that were much more challenging.
Cheers,
FL
ugh. Please don't. This is the most interesting discussion I've seen in a while, and I don't want to see it diverted into theories of how the earth used to circle Saturn.
Crop circles are considered by many to be the best available alien UFO evidence, and some of the difficulties in explaining them by any other means are quite hard to gainsay, however, VadeRetro is correct: we aren't going to accept extraordinary explanations without extraordinary proof.
As science now stands, our fallback position when the evidence is interesting, but cloaked in mystery, is not alien UFO's, it is undergraduate pranksters.
So the proof that crop circles come from Little Green Men (LGM) is that no one has so far exhaustively proven that every crop circle ever made was made some other way. ("Well, what about this one over here!?")
You're relentlessly not getting it about where the burden of proof lies for extraordinary claims. As for medved, he's posted the same long articles in-line hundreds of times. He defends them mainly by questioning the psychiatric condition of those who dispute him. You and he should have fun going over each other's links. He can learn about sacred geometry and you can learn how the earth once circled Saturn but escaped while the universe was still more electrical than gravitational.
He shows us some very deep connections between the geometries of the siting relationships of the Cydonia monuments on mars, and some of the crop circles, and he has therefore, a partial explanation of the circles as an attempt to communicate something important to us.
This seems to me to be the strongest, if a somewhat technically dense, argument currently on the table for crop circles being of extraordinary origin, so I've been surprised you haven't brought it up.
Here's his web site if you want to check into it:
I'm trying to think why I've been skipped so far. Perhaps because I've already had three colonoscopies? Could the doctor who did my last one be an alien? His name sounds kind of funny.
As I mentioned earlier, there is MUCH that doesn't meet the eye.
Hoagland is a bit a hack and a grandstander, and many people cringe at the mention of him. HOWEVER, he does bring up some interesting ideas every now and then... :)
You haven't been skipped. It is well-known that 94% of proctologists are aliens, who have assumed human guise so they can freely indulge their nefarious, other-worldly practice of anal probing.
As for the other 6% ... you don't want to know.
Ah, but the subtle, by nature, requires action.
You guys are sure into anal probes.
That should be, PUBLICALY accessible science tends to debunk UFOs (and crop circles, and cattle mutilations, and etc...).
Don't blame me. It's your spaced-out alien buddies who travel all this way to flatten our crops and probe our buns.
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